


Pretty Good Year

by shretl (girlundone)



Series: A Girl Needs A Gun These Days [6]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Honeymoon, Smuff, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23699380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlundone/pseuds/shretl
Summary: The wedding was perfect, but the honeymoon was even better.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Series: A Girl Needs A Gun These Days [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1180568
Comments: 29
Kudos: 47





	Pretty Good Year

**Author's Note:**

> This little fic, for which reader discretion is advised, is dedicated to all the essential workers out there. I'm immunocompromised, sheltering in place with my two elderly parents in the epicenter of the United States. Our lives wouldn't be possible with these wonderful people who leave home so we don't have to. Thank you so very much.
> 
> Also, thanks as always to my wonderful beta reader, [Some_Writer.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Some_Writer/pseuds/Some_Writer) Stay safe everyone!

The day dawned pearl grey. Opalescent streaks of pink and orange lit the sky. Garrus buried his face in the firm pillow, loath to wake up so early after seemingly so little sleep. 

They arrived on Nevos, that asari colony famed for its sandy beaches and twin moons the previous night after a long and cramped transport ride from the Citadel. Exhausted from the wedding and lengthy journey, he and Shepard had little energy to do anything else but check in to the tiny cottage they were renting on the beach for the next two weeks and fall into bed— for a deep, restful sleep.

But now… now the tangy scent of fresh salt air wafted in and the rhythmic sound of waves breaking on the shore inspired a certain mood that had been lacking the night before. What was it that Victus had said? Fornicating on the beach. That sounded about right.

Garrus stretched out sleepily, his rangy arm moving to pull Shepard closer, but all his taloned hand felt was a cold, rumpled bed. 

His eyes finally opened once more, taking in the empty spot where Shepard had slumbered for a moment before he lifted his head to search the room for her with his eyes. 

She stood before the wide duraglass doors that led to the beach, the gossamer-thin silk robe she wore fluttering in the faintest breeze the drafty doors afforded. The silken folds revealed as they concealed, clinging to the shape of her, the curves he had learned to love. And oh, how he wanted to learn that lesson again. 

He slid from the warm sheets to stand on the cool floor. Stretching his wiry, plated body, unashamed of his nakedness, for the beach was empty at such an hour, before padding on silent feet to his newly-minted wife.

Wife! He was a husband now. To think he had been so afraid of this change in title. Afraid of altering the status quo of their relationship, when nothing had changed at all, save that radiant glow Shepard had since the wedding. She still had it now as she turned her head, her bright hair lit by the rising sun, to smile that small, secret smile he loved so much up to his face. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

She had said that once. On Tuchanka, she had said that under the nuclear aurora and though a few moments later he had kissed her for the first time, he had still been too afraid to say what he so desperately, so deeply had wanted to say. 

He said it now. “Yeah. You are.”

Her smile went from small to brilliant as mellow sunlight filled the room. Yet no sun could compare to the glow on her face as she began, “Compliments—“

He kissed her. Hard and slow and deep. 

He kissed her until her soft, warm flesh melted into his unyielding plates. 

He kissed her, and when she grew breathless, he laid her on the bed and parted her silken robe like leaves of grass. 

She was not motionless during this onslaught, but rather her hands sought to caress every inch of him as her mouth returned those kisses fervently. But when those clever, eager hands slid from his waist to his spreading pelvic plates, Garrus plucked them away and held her wrists for a long moment. “Stay still.”

Shepard’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he stroked the swath of white flesh exposed by the parted robe. He pushed the silk until her breasts were exposed and gently bit the swelling curves there. Her breath caught, but she didn’t move until he began rasping the tempting sugar pink peaks that tipped her breasts with his tongue. Then her slender fingers flew up and clutched him beneath his fringe, roughly massaging the sensitive hide there. 

He was not deterred, however good her ministrations felt. Instead, he slipped the robe off her shoulders and nuzzled that spot where her neck and shoulder met before tracing a path to the sweeping curve of her collarbone with his tongue. There he tested his teeth against the jutting bone until she drove her nails into the tender spot high beneath his fringe. Soothing the indentations left by those teeth with his tongue was not enough for her, though. She tugged on his fringe until he lifted his head and then their faces met in crushing kisses once more. 

In rush to have her, to join with her, Garrus jerked the robe from her body. But as his talons brushed the silken skin of her wrists, an idea took hold of him, though he ached to enter her. Instead, he traversed the entire length of her body, searching out the soft, delicate skin of her wrists, her belly, her ankles, behind her knees, until he came to the impossibly soft and velvety flesh between her thighs. They trembled, as they always did, with desire and anticipation as his mandibles tickled the skin there. He knew the tremor, the scent of her, so well. To think there were people who only sought and chased the new and fresh when the comfortable and familiar was so alluring. 

With the first flick of his tongue, Shepard cried out softly, and as he built up a rhythm that matched the waves beating the shore, her fingers clutched at his fringe so that he feared for the spiky appendages. Yet his target did not waver and as he brought her to a fever pitch, she repeated his name over and over. When she said his name like that— Garrus, Garrus— filled with yearning and desire, he himself nearly came undone. But though he throbbed almost painfully, he didn’t let up until she gently pushed him away. 

He lifted his head and then his body, working his sore mandibles a moment before Shepard’s face caught his attention. With her eyes closed and her mouth parted, she looked so sated, so satisfied, so serene. She wasn’t even this relaxed, this unguarded, in her sleep. No one ever saw her like this but him. It was true that she was a public figure, a hero, and a piece of her belonged to the masses. But this side of her, Shepard in repose, the soft and tranquil Shepard that was his alone. 

Her eyes opened and that secret smile touched her lips. That too was his and his only. She reached up to stroke his scarred mandible and he bent his head until their foreheads touched. His aching need for her was eclipsed for a moment by the peacefulness of her afterglow. And indeed she was glowing. But he thought he could be content to lie like this, their bodies nestled together like a puzzle finally solved, until their breaths, co-mingling in the closeness of their faces, evened out and their heart rates subsided. 

Shepard, though, seemed to have other ideas. Her hand had slipped between them, finding his rigid length and then stroking it with that deft, precise proficiency that comes with intimate knowledge of another person. She worked him until he was gasping, writhing, ready to spill in her hand and on her belly. 

But not yet. He wrenched her hand away and pushed himself inside her. The relief of her heat, her wet warmth, her tightness was so immense that her familiar gasp was lost in the echo of his own. 

Garrus’ arms shook as he willed himself not to move for a moment, but to let Shepard acclimate beneath him. She moved first, though, her hand soothing his waist as she whispered, “You feel so good.”

He huffed a shaky laugh and replied, “I was just thinking the same thing,” before he began to move, gently at first, and words were lost to him. 

So often when they made love, Garrus was focussed on a pattern he created, a set of rules he likes to control. To set a rhythm, to make Shepard come first, to seek his own release. But he had broken his own parameters and now he could concentrate on building up to his own release without the constraints of his own red tape. 

He moved with only the thought of his pleasure. He chased his own desire like wind racing down a valley. And she urged him on. She goaded him with words whispered in his aural canal and skilful fingers that drove him closer and closer to the edge. She lavished kisses on his mandibles and pressed her knees into his waist. 

And like that expanse of water outside, the waves spilling on the sandy beach, he crested and washed ashore in the white stretch of her body. Too spent to move, he buried his head in the hollow of her shoulder and let that ineffable peace of the aftermath wash over him. 

Once more, she stroked his fringe, as rhythmically as the tide came in. And as he drifted off into the lull of sleep, he thought marriage really was not something to fear after all.


End file.
